Civilization could not exist until there was written language, because without written language no generation could bequeath to succeeding generations anything but its simpler findings.

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.

The truth seems to be that they [teachers of grammar] were victims of a mighty hoax, one of those true belly-rumbling impostures which a workaday world can but seldom afford.

Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.

Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.

Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.

You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.

Language is a living thing. It must survive in men's minds and on their tongues if it survives at all.

Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.

Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.

This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others.

My favourite plant is the foxglove. I think they are a perfect balance between being a garden plant and a wild plant, as at home in woodland as they are in a city.

We feel good and ill only in proportion to our self-love.

As a cartoonist, I'm a caricaturist. First you find out what somebody really looks like, and then you find out what they 'really' look like.

The house had a name. The Banana House. It was carved onto a piece of sandstone above the front door. It made no sense to anyone.

The future of marketing belongs to honest information, accurate data and clear claims based on truth.

Nature encourages no looseness; pardons no errors.

I am not good at aligning myself with any movement that comes along but also I don't like the thought of sitting back and doing nothing.

You cannot live this life anymore without the ability to read.